SpaceX plans to send two people on a trip around the moon next year. Late yesterday evening, CEO Elon Musk spoke about the mission, which will involve the company's two long-awaited technologies: the Crew Dragon capsule and the powerful Falcon Heavy rocket.
The two as-yet-unnamed astronauts will be placed in a capsule atop Falcon Heavy. They will then take off from Pad 39A, a historic site that was used during the Apollo mission. The launch pad remains the only piece of equipment that has already been tested: just a week ago, SpaceX used it to launch the Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. Falcon Heavy and Crew Dragon are still under development. Both will undergo separate flight tests later this year.
The private space company has long been planning a human flight. In 2014, NASA signed contracts with Boeing and SpaceX to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX announced yesterday that the first such flight involving the new Crew Dragon capsule will take place in the second quarter of 2018. It follows on from Crew Dragon's independent, unmanned launch to the ISS, scheduled for later this year.
The 2018 lunar target came as a surprise. Just six months ago, Musk made the grand announcement that 2018 will be the year his company will send its first mission to Mars. Late last week, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell stood in front of Launch Pad 39A (and the Falcon 9 has yet to be launched on the ISS) and told a group of reporters that the company was postponing its first launch to Mars until 2020 in order to tackle the crew capsule. In retrospect, this statement can be seen as a hint of lunar ambition.
This statement was, in fact, a response to a reporter's question regarding the audit of the control department. The report said SpaceX is almost a year behind schedule with the development of the crew capsule, which it is doing under a $ 2.6 billion contract with NASA. Although it was designed for low-Earth orbit - which is partially shielded from cosmic radiation by the Earth's magnetosphere - Musk says the capsule is robust enough to protect the crew in deep space, and the only improvement needs to be made to the communications system.
Delays in the space business are normal. SpaceX originally planned to launch the first Falcon Heavy - essentially a Falcon 9 rocket with two additional first stages attached for extra thrust - late last year. But that launch was postponed even before the Falcon 9 rocket exploded in an unfortunate launch pad error on September 1 this year. Musk says the Falcon Heavy will take off later this summer. Regarding the Crew Dragon manned capsule, Musk says he expects the first capsule to test flight by the end of this year. “Six months later, we will send NASA crew to the International Space Station, and in another six months there will be a mission to lunar orbit,” he says.
Amid a flurry of questions from reporters, Musk never revealed the names of two future lunar astronauts who "have already made significant contributions to the lunar mission," he says. Musk only says that the price this pair will pay will be slightly higher than that of the astronauts who fly to the ISS. Before launching into space on a tight schedule, they will have to pass health and wellness tests and start training this year. The mission will last about a week. "Look at the surface of the moon, go a little further into deep space and travel back to Earth," Musk says. "The total distance, I think, will be 500,000-600,000 kilometers."
This is about a hundred times less than before Mars.
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